Hi, I’m Doug. I wrote about baseball (and, specifically, the Giants) at McCovey Chronicles since 2014. Then I got fired for being an independent contractor, an arrangement which always seems to have benefited my employer much more than it benefited me. Kind of a double whammy, if you think about it!
To sum up the part you likely already know, I live in California. Last year, California passed a law called AB 5 which was meant to stop companies from classifying employees as independent contractors when those employees were the core of the companies’ business. There was a provision in it about freelance journalists being limited to 35 articles per outlet per year; since all of the independent contractors at SB Nation sites are technically freelance journalists and we all write more than 35 articles a year, SB Nation fired everyone, and now here we are on Substack.
When I talk about being fired because of a new California law, people offer their sympathy (thank you) and then immediately pivot to blaming the law, and the state, and occasionally the Democrats, and then sometimes it becomes about over-regulation? I generally zone out after the sympathy because that’s the part that’s about me, and then the rest of it isn’t about me, so it isn’t as interesting.
But here’s the thing about AB 5: It is overall a good law. I don’t like the part that affected me and decreased my income by more than $199 a month, but on that whole, it’s a pro-labor law that will have positive effects for California’s workforce for a long time.
Even the part where me and everyone on the website I used to write for got laid off is understandable. The point of the law is to protect workers against exploitation by their employers. SB Nation was exploiting us by drastically underpaying us for our work and refusing to consider making any of us employees. The law fixes that.
Could it be a better law? Oh, yes. Of course! It could have provided more protections for people in my situation, or it could have rolled out more slowly, or it could have had a much higher article limit than 35, or it could have rewarded companies that hired its freelancers full-time, thus encouraging them to do the right thing.
But on the other hand, SB Nation and its parent company, Vox, were never going to do the right thing. They had years before the bill was passed where they could have talked to any of us about becoming employees. They had months after the bill was passed, but before it went into effect, where they could have communicated their thinking to us, and asked for feedback, and tried to soften the blow. They could have made so, so many different choices if they’d cared about their writers even a little bit.
They didn’t. So, okay, bye.
The irony is that the law is working the way it’s supposed to. SB Nation is hiring a bunch of full-time employees to run its sites. I haven’t heard, since this doesn’t affect me, but I would assume the mandate we had last year to post seven articles a day on the site will go away in favor of fewer, higher quality articles (We did not like that mandate, and neither did our readers, but it did lead to more page views. The system works!). All the California sites will be run by people paid like they matter, and given benefits because this is their job, and allowed to make the best content they can.
I thought about applying for one of those jobs, and there are two main reasons I didn’t:
I am quite sore at SB Nation! This goes back to them firing Marc Normandin and Whitney McIntosh, who I just liked reading, and continues through them firing me, who liked writing, and Bryan and Sami and Roger and Kevin, who I just liked. It’s not a company I trust to do right by its employees, and the reason for that is its recent history.
What they are looking for is people to contribute to multiple sites. The natural second sport for me to cover would be football, except I think football is bad and literally every part of it that isn’t the actual games has always bored me to absolute death. The combine? Can’t imagine why anyone would ever watch that. The draft? The most boring TV show I’ve ever seen, and I saw the part of The Walking Dead where they were doing nothing on that farm. As for other sports, I don’t follow hockey and have a very surface-level understanding of basketball (which I might talk about later, so stick around), and what, was I gonna learn a whole bunch about some new sport for those assholes? Not to be too glib here, but, nah.
So I’m on Substack. It’ll all be free for now. If lots of people read, then I’ll start charging for subscriber-only posts, but for the moment, that would just ensure no one reads them. The plan for this site is that for the first week (that’s now!) I’ll write something every day, and then I’ll drop it down to twice a week, probably Tuesday and Thursday. I hope you read it and it’s good and you like it and share it on social media and I become the sensation in Giants fandom that I so clearly deserve to be.
If you are thinking, “Hey Doug, I remember you from before, but this post doesn’t seem to have enough bad jokes to be your style,” then yes, you are right. Let me rectify that:
A guy runs into his friend while walking his dog. The guy says, “Hey, this is my new dog. He’s incredible! He can speak English! Ask him anything.”
The friend is understandably skeptical of the guy, but he decides to play along. So he looks around the neighborhood for inspiration and, settling on the first thing he sees, asks the dog, “What goes on top of a house?”
“Roof,” the dog says.
The friend takes a moment and regroups. “Maybe this is a little closer to your heart,” he says. “What’s Tony La Russa’s animal charity called?”
“ARF,” the dog says.
The friend is getting a little frustrated now. He glances at the guy, not hiding his irritation at both the guy’s bad jokes and his own poor decision making. So he picks a new question. “All right,” the friend says. “Who was your favorite minor league signing the Giants made this offseason?”
The dog doesn’t take any time at all to respond. “Ruf,” the dog says.
Without a word, the friend rolls his eyes and walks away. The dog and the guy both watch him go for a moment, before turning to each other.
“Did he want me to say Jerry Blevins?” the dog asks.